Scene from Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso": The Damsel and Orlando

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Scene from Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso": The Damsel and Orlando

Artist Benjamin West (American, 1738-1820)

Date1793

DimensionsFrame: 47 1/4 × 39 5/8 × 4 1/8 in. (120 × 100.6 × 10.5 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of Florence Scott Libbey

Object number

1912.10

Not on View

Label TextThe dramatic interplay of glances and gestures depicts the climactic moment when Orlando, hero of the 1516 Italian epic poem, Orlando Furioso (Orlando Enraged), realizes that his love, Angelica, has married another. A shepherdess and her husband show Orlando a bracelet that Angelica gave to them as thanks for sheltering Angelica and her new husband. The astonished Orlando recognizes the bracelet as one he had given to Angelica as a token of his love. The children toying with Orlando’s discarded armor recall a Renaissance motif suggesting a warrior “disarmed” or “unmanned” by love. The frothing horse foreshadows Orlando’s eventual madness caused by the loss of Angelica. The first American artist to become internationally renowned, Benjamin West spent most of his career in London, where he was an influential teacher (he taught many American artists, including John Trumbull and Washington Allston; see their paintings in this gallery).Published References

Public Characters of 1805, London, VII, 1805, p. 562 (as The Damsel and Orlando in the Hope Collection, "first painted for the late Bishop of Bristol").

Barlow, J., Columbiad, a Poem, Philadelphia, 1808, p. 398 (as The Damsel and Orlando).

Galt, J., The Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West, Esq., London, 1820, II, p. 221.

Godwin, Blake-More, "An Important Benjamin West in the Museum," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 36, May 1920, p. 1, repr. p. 2. (reprinted in International Studio, June 1920).

The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 82, June 1938, repr. p. 8.

Gardner, A. and S. Feld, American Painting, A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Greenwich, Conn., 1965, p. 32.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 110-111, pl. 6.

Staley, Allen, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven, 1986, no. 193, pp. 263-264, repr.

Grindle, Rob, "The Libbey Legacy," Metropolitan, Toledo and the North Coast, vol. 3, no. 7, Sept./Oct., 1988, repr. p. 36.